It was a different kind of Friday gossip dump last week when Taylor Swift announced that she’d bought back her masters. Usually when celebrity news breaks on a Friday it’s meant to be buried. In Taylor’s case, nothing she ever does on any day at any time is ignorable, and certainly not this. Not owning her masters, when seeing them sold to an archnemesis had been the biggest setback of her career. 

 

The bigger the setback, though, the bigger the comeback. Taylor has engineered a monumental win – and for a girl who loves trophies, these are her most significant ones, the six trophies that are her first six albums. Billboard is reporting that the cost of her self mastery is $360 million. 

 

What’s interesting about that, though, is that just over a week before Taylor made the announcement, Page Six reported that Taylor “has a chance to buy original recordings back” and credited Scooter Braun for “encouraging the deal”. In that article, Page Six cited the possible number as between $600 million and a billion which, as we know now, is way off. But imagine working her ass off the way Taylor did the last few years to put herself in a position to be able to acquire her own art outright, and having to share some of the credit with the man she blamed for not being able to own it in the first place?! Misogyny is persistent and, as soon as they could, Taylor’s team moved to shut that sh-t down, with source statements published at E! News and PEOPLE.com, among other outlets saying that: 

“Contrary to a previous false report, there was no outside party who ‘encouraged’ this sale. All rightful credit for this opportunity should go to the partners at Shamrock Capital and Taylor’s Nashville-based management team only. Taylor now owns all of her music, and this moment finally happened in spite of Scooter Braun, not because of him.”

 

Tree Paine, clearly, had no time for this narrative. 

Back to that Page Six report though – you will note, it kinda got overlooked at the time because, well, at the time Taylor was main character-ing in the Blake Lively/Justin Baldoni situation over subpoenas and extortion rumours. Taylor doesn’t like to be scooped and I do wonder now, in hindsight, now that we know what her actual priority has been lately, whether the internet’s fixation with her friendship with Blake and the legal battle was a benefit to her in keeping this development pretty locked down, and if she used it to her advantage. Let them think what they’re going to think, let them obsess and be distracted with that mess over there while I focus quietly on adding to my empire over here. 

 

It's another reminder that where megastars like Taylor and Beyoncé and Gaga etc are concerned, people claim to know more than they actually do. And what they think they know might not be worth knowing. But also, remember, Taylor Swift Incorporated keeps a ledger. Page Six was long on their sh-t list before Blake and before this most recent development with her masters. It’s highly doubtful that any legitimate Taylor Swift sources would be talking to Page Six, especially if they’re publishing stories attributing anything to do with this sale to Scooter f-cking Braun, ffs. 

But as it always is with Taylor, she has more than enough energy to keep grudges while taking a victory lap. And she’s not interested in a victory lap in private. For months now Taylor’s been undercover, very quiet, very inside. Now she has the best reason to go back outside. We saw her out for dinner with Dakota Johnson the other night and on Saturday she and Selena Gomez went for dinner in New York. Gossip sesh, obvi. 

 

It’s giving Golden Globes 2024, right? All that’s missing is Keleigh Teller who, two days prior, was also seen in New York at the Knicks game. She may not be on the list of who Taylor is willing to be seen with right now. Selena and Taylor, of course, go way back. And Dakota isn’t a squad regular which, perhaps, deters from any association by connection. Will be interesting to see how long she stays outside for – if this is just a quick dip to smug about her triumph or if she’s ready to flaunt out for summer.